


a root, a branch, a new-grown leaf

by ambyr



Category: Sunshine - Robin McKinley
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 12:23:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13053924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambyr/pseuds/ambyr
Summary: Mel's tattoo is changing. Sunshine wants to understand why.





	a root, a branch, a new-grown leaf

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChibiSquirt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibiSquirt/gifts).



Mel and I hadn't quite closed the blinds the night before, and the sunrise shining through them cast bars of pale gold across the rumpled bed. Where they fell on Mel, who had somehow shed the blanket and the better part of the sheet in the night, they made him look like some previously undiscovered species of striped demon. I propped my head up on one arm to admire the effect. It wasn't unusual for me to be awake before Mel, bakery hours being what they were, but waking up at 4 in the morning generally meant waking up in the dark. Paulie, who was working up the courage to propose adding a recipe of his own to the bakery rotation, had volunteered for the early shift this morning as part of his ongoing campaign to butter me up. It was rare that I could indulge in sunlit morning ogling, and I intended to make the most of the opportunity.

Mel, along with almost everyone else who lacked my affinity, had less appreciation for willingly waking with the sun than I did. As the light shifted to touch his eyes, he made an inarticulate noise and turned away from the windows, pulling a pillow to half-cover his face. That left the shoulder with his oak tree tattoo bare. It had always been my favorite, and I smiled at the way its branches seemed to soak up the sunlight. I could almost pretend it was growing while I watched. In fact--hadn't it been further from the mole by his armpit, before? And I didn't remember the topmost branches reaching quite so close to his neck.

I blinked, then shook myself. I was tired, that was all. I needed a cup of tea and the bright flood of full daylight, not just what was seeping through the blinds.

If I saw one spray of leaves sway toward me as I climbed out of bed and headed for the kitchen, it was only a trick of the light.

* * *

At work, I found myself glancing at the tree tattoo at odd moments throughout the day, as though I might catch it in something.

"Do I have sauce on my arm?" Mel asked when I stopped by the kitchen to grab a snack and share a quiet moment after the lunch rush.

"What? No." I hadn't even noticed my eyes drifting. The tattoo, in any case, was exactly where it had been that morning, and the only motion was the rippling of Mel's muscles under his skin as he reached out to wrap an arm around me. It was a brief hug. Even with winter coming on, the heat roaring from the stove and broiler left neither of us wanting to cuddle. It helped, though. Touches from Mel were always centering, calming. _Mel_ was centering, calming. 

And the tattoo was part of Mel. I had no idea why it had begun to preoccupy me, but I resolved firmly to forget about it. I had enough in my life that was wild and strange and uncertain. It was making me see strangeness where there was nothing to see but Mel, my solid and reliable foundation.

* * *

Except, three weeks later, the tattoo had definitely grown.

I had been out the night before with Con. Our excursions were not what I could call regularly scheduled events. I wasn't sure vampires _believed_ in regularly scheduled events, or if they understood the human calendar at all. Con certainly showed no sign of being able to track my relatively straightforward weekly schedule, and was as likely to invite me out on a night when a four-in-the-morning wake-up loomed as on a Sunday. In late autumn, this wasn't a problem. There were more than enough hours of darkness. But come summer, I was going to have to explain some things about the human need for sleep.

Come summer. A few weeks ago, I had been anticipating my imminent demise, and now I was thinking whole seasons ahead. Of course, ordinary humans probably planned years into the future, but I wasn't ordinary. And I had never exactly been the type for Grand Plans and Life Goals. I was willing to take my thoughts about summer as a sign of personal growth and healing. 

That, and a sign that the shorter days were beginning to get to me. Now there was a cheery thought. Winter hadn't even started yet. Although having a vampire as my own personal nighttime tour guide helped make the hours of darkness something to look forward to, rather than endure.

We went to the lake that night. Not the house where we'd been kept captive--even with Bo comprehensively gone, neither of us found it a pleasant place for a relaxing evening--but to my parents' cabin. It turned out that whatever else Con had been lying about--quite a lot--he had meant it when he told the goddess of pain he was drawn to the area's natural beauty. He would watch the water of the lake the way a human might watch a TV show, endlessly fascinated by each small ripple. 

At least, that was what it looked like to me. I supposed that to vampire senses, the lake might appear entirely different. There was a lot of homogeneity in the water, wasn't there? Maybe he could see straight to the bottom, and was studying the social life of the fish.

That made me think of Mel, who had no particular fascination with water but could spend an hour lying on his back watching falcons circle in the sky. Hard to do that at night, of course. I tried to superimpose my daytime hikes with Mel over my nighttime rambles with Con--to imagine what it would be like to venture outdoors with both of them, together--and failed.

Besides, I thought, a little wildly, what would I pack for our picnics?

I sighed. I was tired of living two lives, but I didn't know how to stop. Seeking a distraction, any distraction, I reached inside for my tree-self and let myself settle into it, branch by branch and leaf by leaf. I could feel the moonlight brushing my branches, even though I was sitting under the shelter of the porch. The impossibility of it bothered me more than the larger impossibility of me becoming, of me being, a tree. Slowly, as though I were pulling up and setting down roots with each step, I moved down the porch steps, settling myself on the strip of grass between the cabin and the lake. Each blade was covered in frost--the first frost of the year, I noted distantly--and crunched under my feet.

Con, still leaning against the railing watching the water, didn't move. To my tree-self he was simply part of the landscape, no less one with nature than the chipmunk rustling in the woods or the (presumed) fish beneath the surface of the lake. It was not daylight, and so he did not need my protection, my shade. He was simply . . . there. It should have bothered me. Trees are all about incorruptibility from dark magic, and vampires are the embodiment of corrupt. So I'd been taught. But SOF was full of others, and my tree-self was undisturbed by vampires--at least, by this vampire. Many things I had been taught were wrong.

My roots reached deeper, tangling with the roots of other trees. Trees talk with one another, did you know that? I don't mean with words. But they transfer nutrients and messages through their roots. I read an article on globenet about it, once. It had been posted to one of the groups I read by someone who thought it was code for some great magical conspiracy, but Aimil checked the references and told me that, no, it was real science. I wasn't sure if that was exactly what my tree-self was doing--I was pretty sure I couldn't feed from the same nutrients as trees did--but it was a good enough metaphor. I wasn't just a tree, I was a forest.

I reached further and felt the unease of the bad spot to the east creep into my consciousness. There were trees growing there, of course. If asked, most humans would probably have said that trees couldn't perceive bad spots at all, that they were purely a human thing. But these trees could. They were growing, but not happily, keeping their branches close to their trunks and their roots shallow in the soil.

I tried to draw back, to settle in on myself again. But my tree-self had other ideas. Its branches were extending, its roots growing. The light-web sunk in my hands was no longer buried in my flesh, but glowing brighter and brighter. It flared abruptly, staining my eyes with afterimages, and I felt the energy flow east, sucked through the endless network of roots. 

_Yessssss_ , said my tree. I barely heard it. I was too busy falling over--or I would have, if Con hadn't caught me. When the afterimages stopped dancing before my eyes, I could see that he was wearing a very peculiar look indeed. 

A human would have asked, "What happened?" or even "Are you all right?" Con simply said, slowly, "I think we had better return you to your home." And then, when nodding made me sway in exhaustion, "I will carry you."

When he tried to lift me, I realized my feet had sunk into the frozen earth up to my ankles. I had to wiggle my toes--my suddenly very cold toes--to work them free. I didn't remember taking my shoes off, probably because I hadn't taken my shoes off. They were simply and inexplicably gone. I scowled. I had _liked_ those shoes. They had soles I could stand in all day in the bakery without getting footsore.

I focused my attention on the injustice of the missing shoes, and on the discomfort of being carried by a vampire. The odd angles and jarring shocks each time his feet hit the ground distracted me from the inarguable fact that the bad spot to the east was gone.

* * *

Exhaustion let me ignore that thought throughout the night and while I dragged myself through my morning routine. I set my mind to cinnamon rolls, and refused to think about anything else as I thumped the heels of my hands over and over into the dough. I mixed up muffins, started the filling for tarts bubbling on the stove, and carried the first batch of pastries into the kitchen on auto-pilot.

Mel was there, of course, looking positively chipper in comparison. I managed to dredge up a smile--and then felt it freeze on my face. The tree tattoo had definitely grown. It should have been covered by his shirt, which today, in deference to the chillier temperature, had sleeves. Instead, it reached up his neck nearly to his ear.

"Sunshine?" Mel asked.

I shook myself. "Just a lousy night's sleep."

"Do you need a raincheck on tonight?" He sounded casual, but I could tell the answer mattered. I wondered, suddenly: had we been having fewer dates? Our schedule had never exactly been a regular one, with plans aside from the reliable movie night decided a day or two in advance. But it was possible I had been suggesting fewer evenings, leaving more nights free in hope of Con's irregular visits. Well, if I had, there was no time like the present to stop.

"No. No, I'll be fine. As long as you weren't planning anything too active."

He flashed a reassuring smile. "I promise, no nighttime hikes."

I hoped my flinch wasn't visible. I didn't know how to explain it if it was.

I also didn't know how to explain the growing tattoo. An obvious equation was sitting in my mind: Sunshine reaches into her tree-self, Mel's tree tattoo grows. (Had it grown after my very first experience with my tree-self, when I rescued Con? I couldn't remember. I'd been far too distracted by the trauma of my kidnapping to notice.) But that did nothing to tell me _why_.

Besides, I told myself, not believing it for a second, twice could be a coincidence.

Back in the bakery, I shut the door and went rummaging through the drawer where broken kitchen implements I couldn't quite bear to throw away went for a quiet and eternal retirement. Toward the back was my favorite whisk--or what _had_ been my favorite whisk before two of the wire loops snapped. I dragged the chair to the brightest patch of sun, sat, and contemplated the whisk.

You could wait and do this later, a part of me whispered. You're still shaky from last night. What's the rush?

I ignored that part, closed my eyes, and thought hard about the whisk as it once had been, its loops smooth and unbroken, its handle smoothly varnished instead of beginning to splinter. I heard, very faintly, the rustling of leaves. When I opened my eyes, the whisk was whole.

The next time I took a tray of rye bread into the kitchen, I took a good long look at the tattoo. The change was minor, but there was definitely a leaf--pale green and mostly furled--where there hadn't been one before.

Mel, of course, caught me looking. There was a question in his eyes, but he didn't voice it, and I didn't answer. This was not a conversation I wanted to have at Charlie's.

* * *

Truthfully, it wasn't a conversation I wanted to have at all. I was grateful that going home with Mel meant climbing on the back of his motorcycle, not climbing into a car. No one expects you to talk much while the wind is streaming past your face. Once the bike was parked and our helmets were off, though, it was harder. We climbed up the stairs in silence, and I let Mel steer me toward the sofa.

"I'll make tea," he offered, and I let him, putting off the inevitable until I had a warm, comforting cup in hand. He sat down beside me, his own hands empty.

"Mel," I started, then stopped. Our relationship was built on silences, on acceptance. On not prying or probing. I was going to break that, and I felt a terrible premonition that other things would break as well. But I had to know. Mel simply looked at me, patient. I gathered breath to begin again. "Your tree tattoo. Why do you have it?"

Mel let out a tiny sigh, but when he spoke, his voice was even. "Onyx Blaise gave it to me."

I didn't remember spilling the tea, but my legs were wet and scalded, and Mel had stood up and gently taken the cup out of my hands.

"Onyx Blaise. My father." I had never told Mel who my father was--it was one of many, many things we didn't talk about. Like what Mel had done, during the Voodoo Wars. It was clear, though, from his nod, that the information wasn't a surprise. "Why." I cleared my throat. "Why would my father give you a tattoo?"

Mel crouched down, bringing himself to eye level. His heels, I noticed, were perfectly flat on the floor. I envied that. I could only ever crouch on my toes. And I was thinking about this, of course, to distract myself. I tried to force myself to focus. To hear the words that I suddenly knew were coming, and did not at all want to hear.

"To find you."

In all the years that Mel and I had been together, I had never thought it anything but coincidence that he had walked into Charlie's that January in search of a job. "So, what," I said, feeling my voice rising octave by octave and unable to stop myself, "my dad . . . sent you to me. As some sort of arranged marriage?" 

"Sunshine." Mel reached out a hand, thought better of it, and stopped. "I am reasonably certain," he said carefully, "that your father never intended us to become involved."

"Oh." I reached for the box of tissues on the side table and began the futile work of mopping myself dry. "What--what did he intend?" That was one of only a thousand questions I wanted to ask, along with You knew my father? and Is my father alive? But I was finding they were stuck in my throat.

Mel heard them anyway. "I met your father during the Voodoo Wars. When I was running dispatches. He . . . became quite convinced of my competence." There was a very long story hidden in that pause. I wanted to hear it, but not now. "I believe he thought that if you ever came into your magic, you might be in need of a bodyguard."

"And that's why you're dating me," I said flatly, knowing even as I said it that it wasn't fair.

"I am dating you because I want to be dating you," Mel said. "Because I'm your friend. Because I love you. Because you are more than Onyx Blaise's daughter." He sighed, and his normally unflappable expression turned rueful. "As a bodyguard, I have been notably unsuccessful. I hope I do better as a boyfriend."

"I'm still in one piece," I pointed out.

"Very little thanks to me. Sunshine--" He stopped. I put down the wad of tea-soaked tissues and reached out to squeeze his empty hand.

"I want to know," I said into the quiet. "I want to know about my father, and what he was doing during the Wars, and why he thought I would need a . . . a bodyguard. I want to know whether he's still alive."

"I don't know," Mel said, answering the final question first. "He was when l last saw him. But that was many years ago."

"Then I want to _find out_ ," I said, surprising myself with my fierceness.

"I will help you," Mel said. "If you'll let me."

"If I'll let you guard me?"

"That, too. Although you seem to do well enough by yourself."

I swallowed. His tone was cautious, neutral, laboring not to imply even the hint of a question. If it hadn't been--if he had asked outright--I wasn't sure I could have answered. "Not entirely by myself."

Mel waited, patient. His hand in mine was very warm, very human. The spilled tea had cooled, and now my legs were simply wet and cold. The contrast was sharp. I thought about other contrasts--between warm and cold, between night and day. I remembered my fancy from the night before, the one that had seemed impossible, of walking side by side with both Mel and Con. It still seemed impossible. But so was a vampire that walked in daylight, my clearing the bad spot, a tattoo that grew with my power. (I wondered suddenly, irreverently, if the tattoo would keep growing forever. If Mel would become a Green Man, covered head to foot in a riot of leaves.) What wasn't impossible was learning to trust Mel with my secrets.

"You promised no nighttime hikes," I said. "How would you feel about breaking that promise?"


End file.
